Time: 6-8 weeks
This unit focuses on encouraging students to explore a range of movement possibilities in preparation for their dance-making experiences. As well, the students' kinesthetic perceptions, techniques, and ability to repeat specific movements are developed. These movement explorations may then be incorporated into students' dance and dance-making activities.
Sample Topic: "Balance, Tumble, and Fall"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
Teacher Note:
The following Starter List of Activities is intended to aid the teacher in planning mini-units and/or units. The activities are described very briefly, and are just a sample of the many activities that could be developed to explore the theme or topic.
1. Introductory Activities
Invite students to stand straight in alignment with eyes closed. Guide students to notice what neutral alignment feels like (i.e., head in line with spine, hips, and knees). Students with physical disabilities may have different neutral alignment. Practise altering the alignment by lifting a foot. Ask students to focus on their alignment while asking questions such as, “How does the body balance when it is out of alignment?”
Let students improvise with balancing. How many different ways can students balance? Can they balance on one, two, or three body parts? How many different ways can students move while balancing in different ways?
Arrange students in partners and practise balancing with each other. Call one student A and the other B. Stress personal safety and consideration for each partner's safety. Ask student A to assist student B in balancing, and notice what the bodies need to do in order to balance with each other. Reverse roles.
Discuss the concept of a weigh scale. Notice how the visual appearance of balance is altered when more weight is placed on one side than the other. Help students to see how the same concept can be applied to the body.
Invite students to run around the room, being careful not to touch anyone else and freeze in a balanced pose when the music stops. Repeat the activity, creating a contrasting shape when freezing for the second time. Guide students to explore movement while they balance on different body bases and in different shapes.
Practise falling very slowly, gradually increasing the speed. Ask students to notice each body part and note how it hits the ground. Then, practise falling in all different directions. Encourage students to consider how their balance affects their bodies' safety as they fall to the ground. Students may want to start these explorations on a soft mat.
Talk about why or how people fall. What happens when they fall? Is there a right or wrong way to fall? Discuss different types of martial arts, paying attention to the various ways that the participants fall. Remind students that dance conveys ideas and feelings to the audience. What ideas and feelings might a dancer be showing when he or she falls? Ask students to explain their comments (e.g., when a dancer falls, he might be conveying a feeling of sadness while another might be conveying fear). Ask students to consider how the elements of dance can change the meaning of a fall.
Practise letting each body part fall by itself. With each fall, explore different dynamics such as duration and speed.
Tell students that tumbling means to fall or roll end over end. Ask them what they have seen that tumbles. Ask them to experiment with ways to tumble. Start slowly, gradually increasing the speed. Use mats on the floor and stress the safest ways of tumbling, keeping the chin tucked in.
2. Main Activities
Guide students as they practise balancing on all levels. Pick two levels and move from one to the other, noting the transition. Try it fast and slow. Help students to create a balancing dance, using the dance-making process.
Instruct students to start in a balanced position. Slowly melt to the floor and quickly get up to assume a new balanced position. Repeat, encouraging the students to create contrasting balances. In addition, students can vary the speed, going down quickly and up slowly. Set the movements to music and have students choose their own variations.
Watch various objects fall (e.g., a rock, a large piece of paper, a crumpled paper, or leaves). Note the movement characteristics and help students to recreate the movements in a dance.
Have students make movement phrases using only or mostly the actions of balance, tumble, or fall. Invite students to comment on the restrictions imposed. When students have created their movement phrases based on either balance, tumble, or fall, ask students to pair up with someone who selected one of the other moves. Challenge the students to make a dance together with the two moves. For example, a person who made a balance dance phrase might pair up with a person who made a fall dance phrase and combine the phrases to make a balance and falling dance sequence.
Next, have students make a balance, tumble, and fall dance in partners. This time, the challenge could be to match each other by doing the movements in exactly the same way or by mirroring each other. Include as many relationships with one another as possible (e.g., beside, high/low, or diagonal).
Invite a martial artist to demonstrate some of his or her movements. Have students create a pair or group dance using the new movements as inspiration. Encourage students to look at the quality of the movements and to explore ideas to make them personal.
Watch a scene from a movie that involves balance, tumble, and fall movements, such as those typically seen in action film stunt sequences. Create a dance in a similar style or respond to the scene through the creation of the students' own dances. Refer to Responding to Arts Expressions.
3. Concluding Activities
Note the different ways that ballet dancers balance. Watch videos or read books about ballet. Do dancers balance on one foot or two? Do they have help? For how long can they balance? Do students see ways of balancing in the ballet that students used in their own dances?
Have students compile a list of words associated with balance, tumble, and fall. From there, students could either create a dance in response to a few of the listed words or create a visual art work based on the same ideas.
Invite students to choose a basic movement of their own to use as a starting point for a dance (e.g., run, stretch, or stroll).
Guide students in creating a piece of expressive writing about one of their dances. Students could incorporate some of the feelings felt while making or viewing the dance.
Use basic percussion instruments to make music for the students' dances.
Bring in a dancer from the community, or a dancer from the school and ask how he or she uses balance, tumble, and fall in his/her dancing.
Sample Topic: "Feelings"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Facilitate a discussion about feelings and how they affect people's lives on a daily basis. Brainstorm all of the feelings students can think of and write the feelings on the board or on chart paper. Have students answer questions such as, “How do I feel when it rains? When I'm talking with a family member? When I learn something new?”
Read story books about how children and adults feel in various situations.
On a piece of paper, have students complete the sentence: “I feel happy when …” or “It makes me angry when …”. Have students write about a time when they felt happy, sad, or angry or any feeling they choose. Have them write about what happened to make them feel that way and how people were moving during that time. For example, people at funerals sometimes move slowly with their heads down, and stand or move close to others. When children are happy, they sometimes skip or run, or jump up and down.
Ask students to show the difference between light and strong movements. Ask students to explore the movements using these dynamic qualities. Make sure students explore all body parts and levels. Discuss what kinds of feelings were evoked when students were moving lightly or strongly. Why did certain movement qualities create different feelings?
Repeat the previous activity using sudden and sustained actions. Explore moving an arm in a sudden manner or in a sustained manner. The same can be done with the torso or legs. Sequence a sudden movement and a sustained movement to follow one another. Create two phrases of sudden and two phrases of sustained movements. In small groups, combine the four phrases in various orders to create a four-phrase movement sequence. Ask students to watch each group demonstrate its sequence. Discuss the different feelings evoked by each sequence.
Draw various shapes on the board. Discuss what types of feelings might be associated with each shape and why. Do asymmetrical (i.e., unbalanced) shapes evoke different feelings than symmetrical (i.e., equal on both sides) shapes?
Practise making shapes that evoke feelings. Have students make their hand look happy, a leg look angry, and the whole body look surprised. Divide the class in half and take turns watching. Ask students to observe how many different kinds of shapes are seen. What characteristics of the shapes suggested certain feelings?
Ask students to walk across the floor while exaggerating a specific feeling. Guide them to focus on speed, force, and pathway. Have the students guess what feeling the others are demonstrating.
In pairs, have students do a call and response activity whereby one person improvises a feeling phrase representing one emotion, and the other person replies with a feeling phrase of his or her own.
2. Main Activities
Pick two opposite feelings and create a dance phrase for each. Challenge students to put them together using an appropriate transition to create a contrasting feelings dance sequence. Have students join small groups and work to combine their individual dance sequences into a feelings dance. Students can use body percussion or the teacher could guide the students with a percussion instrument.
Ask students to list some literal movements that represent happy times such as handshakes, blowing out candles, rocking a baby, waving hello or goodbye, and skipping rope. Then explore these activities manipulating the rhythm, size, and speed of movement. Have students create a dance that demonstrates the association of feelings with actions.
Help students to create a dance about feelings. Create a list of feelings. Cut the list into individual strips of paper and put them into a hat. Have each student pick one feeling and create a shape, a locomotor movement, and a non-locomotor movement to represent this feeling. Allow time to practise and experiment in order to find the shape and movement that best represents that feeling. Then, string the three ideas together with transitions to create a dance sequence. Students can repeat or manipulate the movements to extend the dance sequences into a longer dance composition.
Read a poem about feelings. In partners, create a dance phrase for each line or feeling in the poem. Create a dance to show the emotions of the poem. Remind students to think of the quality of the movements so that they represent the feelings. Arrange for two pairs to work together so that students can offer feedback to one another as to what they are portraying.
Play a few selections from different styles of music. Ask the students to say what feelings are associated with various parts of each selection. Choose one piece and have students explore movements to match the music. Have a discussion about the qualities of those movements. Let students explore again, refining the movement and choosing specific pathways, shapes, and sequences to incorporate into a dance. Put the movement sequences together.
Create a dance about a specific feeling associated with an event (e.g., students could vote on what kind of feeling and event to use). Ask the students to create statements to go with each event and feeling. (E.g., “It makes me angry when people fight!” or “It makes me happy when we play outside.”) Create movements and shapes to go with the statements. Then, in partners, participate in a call and response activity using these movements. Similar to the concept of call and response in music, a call and response in dance means that one person, pair, or group shows (i.e., calls) a dance phrase and the others respond to that call with their own dance phrase.
3. Concluding Activities
Encourage students to perform the dances for each other and for other classes.
Plan an arts night where the students can perform for family, friends, and the community.
Write a narrative or poem to go with their feeling dance.
Create pictures, collages, mural backdrops, or hand-coloured projector slides (i.e., draw on blank slides or overhead transparencies with coloured overhead markers) to go with the feeling dance performance.
Watch video excerpts of dances and have students identify the different actions, shapes, relationships, and dynamic qualities (e.g., light – strong; sudden – sustained). What kinds of feelings and ideas do the dances evoke? What do students think the choreographer intended to convey?
Challenge students to find out why different choreographers make dances. Where do choreographers get their ideas (e.g., memory, observation, current events, imagination)? Students could research on the Internet or write to choreographers and dance companies.
Have students view TV commercials that include dance. What effect did the dance have on the commercial's intended message and audience? Why would an advertising company choose to use dance in a commercial?